Is there a design formula?

We are Alexandra Coston and Wonuola Abiodun, two juniors at MIT majoring in architecture. For the past two years, we have worked with the MIT Museum and Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) on an interview project to isolate and prioritize the skills taught in design education. MAD is putting together a series of activities for learners and educators focused on design skills. To gain insights regarding design, we have been interviewing professionals and academics involved in design to find out which skills they find most integral to their own work. We initially interviewed people from MIT, as well as professionals practicing architecture and other design types in the Boston and Cambridge area; by following chains of recommendations from our interviewees, we’ve seen a breadth of disciplines and heard from people as far away as South Africa.

We began each interview with the question, “if you were to make a three-step formula for design — this plus this plus this equals design — what would that look like?” As broad a field as it is, design has countless important features; asking our interviewees to choose exactly three components forced them to take a minute to think. Note that we didn’t ask the more general, and perhaps more obvious, “how would you define design?” We tried to frame our question in the most scientific way possible, leaning into our backgrounds as MIT students. Rather than just regurgitating the definitions they’ve heard from other people or read online, we wanted our interviewees to decompose what design means to them, then put it in words. Once people were able to identify three overarching concepts, they could then expand on each aspect, revealing details about their individual relationship with design.

Our interviewees responded in one of four ways: (1) they asked us “what type of design” we wanted them to define to allow them to tailor their formula [whichever is the design you know best]; (2) they inquired as to whether their formula could contain four components as opposed to just three [we suppose we’ll allow it]; (3) they rejected our question altogether and were prepared to explain why [oh, do tell?]; or (4) they had no further questions and jumped into their answer.

After welcome pushback or clarification on our question, we received responses that we have arranged into three categories: process, attributes, and refusal. These classifications reflect how the designers approached answering our question, whether that was by creating a formula to describe their design process, detailing the essential attributes or characteristics of design, or refusing to create a design formula altogether.

Process

The interviewees we placed in the process group create a formula that serves as a three- (or four-) step guide to design as an action, or a verb. Describing design as an act of doing is an instructional approach, resulting in relatively straightforward formulas that could act as guides for anyone who wants to know, “If I want to design something, what should I do?” Some designers prefaced their responses with the acknowledgment that “the design process is not universally equivalent; what ‘design’ is will change depending on what you’re designing.”(1) Other designers insisted that their three steps are universal to all forms of design.

Among a few other designers who took the process approach, we observed that the three MIT faculty members we interviewed all responded with their design process and had overlapping characteristics in their formulas, including “problem-framing,” “ideation,” “feedback,” and “iteration” (see index). If you’ve been involved in design discourse, you’ll likely recognize these terms as classics; they’re ubiquitous to popular design processes such as that of Stanford’s d.school. One faculty member highlighted problem-framing because it “is the part people often forget but is the most important.

You need to understand what you’re designing or solving, because otherwise it’s very easy to solve the wrong problem.”(2) Iteration also was deemed essential by another faculty because “design is fundamentally about trying to create the world that we want to see; we’re postulating new possibilities.”(3) Students receive feedback to help them practice “‘kicking the tires’ to see how an idea holds up,”(3) and then should iterate through this formula again.

Two people’s process-related responses mentioned physical elements of the design process: tools and materials. A designer with “knowledge of available materials” and “knowledge of available tools” listed in their formula elaborated that “not everyone has the same materials and tools. Designers must take advantage of what they have in the moment.”(1) In a similar vein, another designer who mentioned “specificity of material” described how essential it is to obtain “clarity on what material is being mobilized through design to address the question,”(4) mentioning material capacities, color palettes, and available scale.

Some design processes were more abstract; for example, one formula equated “noticing,” “joining,” and “worlding/making” to design. This interviewee explained that they chose the first step — noticing — because “design requires paying attention to where there are opportunities, glitches, nuances, points of interest, patterns, and so on.”(5) The next step of the process — joining — requires designers to “find a path to action with the things that were noticed. This could look like connecting patterns across disparate experiences or joining through some material.”

When discussing their final step — worlding, or making — the designer defined “worlding” as “bringing people together to imagine possibilities in order to help make decisions about now” and “making” as “the tangible aspect of “worlding” where we are physically transforming materials.” This aspect of the formula “opens up a lot of possibilities, because things remain nebulous ideas unless made tangible.”

Attributes

As opposed to explaining the essential elements to their design process, some interviewees spoke about design as an entity, or a noun, and spoke about its crucial attributes. In this light, design was personified and haloed in shimmering light; the interviewees spoke about Design with a capital D. This language recounted design as a way of being, responding to those wondering, “If I want to become a designer, what traits should I have?” We’ve categorized these qualities into five themes: intelligence, humanity, and tangibility.

Design attributes related to intelligence, or consideration, included “problem-solving,” “judgment,” “pattern recognition,” “context,” and “resourcefulness.” “Historically, the people who were deemed the best designers were those with an advanced ability for pattern recognition,”(6) explained one interviewee.

“Designers make inferences and comparisons very quickly. For example, when we see people waiting in line, we know what they’re waiting for — food, tickets, etc. Without understanding patterns, we can’t make designs that will affect large populations of people.”

We saw many people mention social aspects they saw as essential to design, and which we saw as relating to the “human experience.” “Empathy” appeared frequently — “don’t design in the abstract. There’s no design that takes place absent of people,”(6) stated one interviewee. As designers, we must ask ourselves questions such as “who are we designing for, and who are we designing with? How do we approach the people who benefit from or are implicated by the outcomes caused by the design work?”

Other designers’ attributes spoke more to the whimsical nature of design: “delight” and “creativity.” One designer who listed “creativity” argued that “there is a fundamental optimism to design; one must believe there’s a way, a path to make things better and come up with better solutions.”(7) They explained how maintaining this belief required creativity, though “people are creative all the time, even if they haven’t been trained or supported with creativity as a central identity.

Finally, “feedback” was a common design trait listed by both interviewees speaking about design as an action and those considering it an entity. The importance of feedback speaks to the significance of designing with and around other humans who can serve as sounding boards, and of making sure the “impact” of a design on the people who use it is as expected. The designer who included “impact” in their formula described how “good design should improve life.”(8)

Our last category, tangibility or physicality, encompassed attributes of “message” and “form” cited by designers. One interviewee geared their answer toward their own profession as a graphic designer. In their work, they listed that “message” is “an essential ingredient to the design process. What is the thing we’re communicating?”(9)

Rejectors

The last category of respondents to this initial interview question were the rejectors — individuals who argued that design could not be contained in a formula. One designer gave the definition — though they disparaged it as “dumb” even while presenting it — that design is turning “not stuff” into “stuff.” They continued that design is the “human development of seeking purpose, where the nature of design is a method of casting atoms into the future; design is an act of futuring.”(10) Another interviewee stated, “design is about making a plan, about being able to make decisions about what you want something to be like before it is realized.”(11)

In a similar theme, a different designer argued, “design is about projecting ourselves into the world in a way that we change and transform the world, not just adapt to it.”(12) Several individuals agreed that design is linked with creating a vision of the future, and that this act is inherent in human beings. A few others spoke about design as an innate ability that remains in the background of our subconscious and thus can be revived even if we forget about it.

“The two abilities constituting a designer are empathy and creativity, which are fundamental to the human being; you’re born with it. You don’t need to be taught design or creativity; you must find it in yourself and bring it back to life,”(13) one interviewee expressed. Another declared, “design is breathing: we all do it. We breathe without being conscious of breathing, just as we are often unaware of designing.”(8)

Asking our interviewees to define design as three aspects helped address our immediate goal of extracting learning goals because those aspects tended to coalesce as parts of the design process or skills that can be taught. But, perhaps we should take a step back and further explore why we care about redefining design in the first place. What’s wrong with the current definitions floating around the internet?

Well, we hope to make design education more equitable and accessible. One problem with many existing explanations of design is that one already needs to recognize what design means to oneself in order to understand the definition! If we want to introduce young students to design, we need a definition that is comfortable to digest, while still conveying the fundamental concept. That end contributed to our request for a simplified, three-part definition of design.

Further, with design broken into just three components, we can more easily explore in which other careers those parts could be relevant. Not all students who study design will go on to be architects or graphic designers, but design skills are still useful in other fields, from mechanical engineering to computer science. If we are able to extract the specific aspects of design that are applicable to these other areas, we can more concretely quantify these relationships.

Have comments or thoughts about these articles? Email us as designpd[a]mit.edu.

Index

Ideation: A process of coming up with new ideas.

Iteration: A process of repeatedly improving a design through prototyping, testing, and feedback.

Problem Framing: A process of discovery to analyze and define a problem.

Pattern Recognition: The ability to identify and understand patterns in the environment

Quote attributions

(1) Kimo Griggs
(2) Maria Yang
(3) John Ochsendorf
(4) Megan Panzano
(5) Emily Norton
(6) Lee Moreau
(7) Beth Altringer Eagle
(8) Nii Botchway
(9) Laura Grey
(10) Rick Griffith
(11) Alix Gerber
(12) Frederick van Amstel
(13) Arvind Lodaya